Redding happy despite 'unfair' penalty

Bike Social ambassador, Scott Redding had another strong race at this weekend’s MotoGP in Catalunya. The twenty-one year old crossed the line twelfth and top production Honda, although sits thirteenth on the result sheet after a time penalty demoted him one position. The MotoGP rookie also battled on track with fellow Brits Cal Crutchlow and Bradley Smith for the first time this season.

After each race, Redding puts together a blog exclusively for Bike Social. Here’s this week’s instalment:

“The race was good today, I was really happy with it apart from the penalty, which kind of sucked as it wasn’t really fair if you ask me but hey-ho you live on and move on! I cut through turn one and got a bit of an advantage but I let off the throttle in sector two to lose a bit of time after that mistake, but they still penalised me! I may as well have kept it pinned and taken the advantage. We did appeal the decision but unfortunately didn’t get anywhere.

It was good to ride with Bradley and Cal early in the race, Bradley began to pull away a bit and then I made a move on Cal in turn five, he tried to come back on me in turn six and I tried to close the door a little bit and we came together. We spent quite a while fighting, we ran wide and lost a second on the lap when we touched but then he pulled in because of bike issues or something. It was a good little battle to be there with those guys for the first half of the race!

Nicky was hounding me down after I’d lost a second in the collision with Cal but he didn’t pass me or anything, I stayed in front until the end so that’s why it’s annoying to get the penalty.

We were feeling the speed disadvantage again this weekend, there’s a long straight at Catalunya so when I hit third, fourth and fifth gears that’s when we saw a huge difference in speed compared to the other bikes. We know what we have to do and there’s not much we can change.

I like Assen, there’s a great atmosphere and huge crowds, with lots of British support! I like the circuit and we had a great race there last year so I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully the weather will be good and we can have another good race. The bike should go well there, we can hopefully use the changes of direction to our advantage and you need big balls in the last few sectors so hopefully we can gain a bit there.